The Master of Pain
by annuscka
Summary: An angsty, late S9 piece in which Luka muses a little over what he really feels, and why. Written under the influence of own angst.


**Title: **The Master of Pain

**Author: **Anna

**Rating:** PG-13

**Archive:** Sure, I love you forever if you understand this one enough to like it :D Just drop me a note.

**A/N: **This is something quite weird I wrote when I was feeling just like Luka in this piece. Carter was meant to be here, but he had to step out…  
[In case anyone who reads this wonder, I have NOT given up on 'The Projects of Life'. I'm just preoccupied with my own head right now.]  
Also – regarding my mentioning of 'the fifth floor' here, I got that from something Carol said in S1/2, when she spoke about the psych ward. Dunno if it still fits, but that's not really a big problem, I think… R/R, and I hope you find this at least a bit….sane =P  
AND – this is set somewhere in S9, post-Hindsight I think…

**THE MASTER OF PAIN**

_"TALK to him, Luka!"_

I can't. I can't say anything.

He doesn't need anyone else telling him that it'll be fine, that he's young, that he'll forget or whatever crap people tell you - I've managed to forget some of it. Or maybe I've drowned it.

I can just tell him what it'll be like, which is not very comforting and probably not what she meant. That he everyday will see things that'll remind him of this, that it'll hit him when he expects it the least. That he'll have to take people screaming at him that he doesn't know, that he will have to nod and agree, because screaming back that you sure as hell do and that they do not know a damn, freaking thing would be very unprofessional.

That he'll feel hopeless, and then get angry. That the anger will consume him until there is nothing left to feast on, and that it'll leave an empty hole deep inside of him. That's the important part, the crucial part. He has to find a way out of there – he can't stay there.

I did. I stayed there for years and years – a decade and more, in fact. And now?

_"… stop being such a MARTYR!"_

Easy for you to say. Easier said than done.

I'm not sure anymore, not sure what I feel. It comes and goes – the blackness fades into dark grey, dark grey gets lighter and light grey fades into something that could be considered white, at least in my own inner eye, which hasn't seen anything remotely light since… then. But other days the darkness reigns again, takes over and fills the hole until every little crack inside me that is not for a surgeon to heal is pouring over with something beyond description – something the people on the fifth floor and especially Myers himself, believe they can put a name and a definition on.

I guess time does mend wounds in some way - maybe not making them disappear, but maybe making their colour fade – making them lighter. Or maybe that is wishful thinking of people like myself who simply cannot stand living in their private hells anymore – maybe time, ironically, will catch them somewhere in the middle of their attempts of leading a normal life and throw them right back in, back in a hell even darker than the previous one? That thought, I suppose, is what keeps the most of us here. We who do not have the strength to pull away – we who have grown to know only this life, we who have started viewing pain and utter darkness as our identities – we who have grown to accept it. We who do not fight back.

Do we – dare I say it – even like it? Do we like being locked away from the outside world, the world that once was ours as well and that so mercilessly was robbed from us in different ways? It's a dark thought, a foul thought that is wrong to utter. You can't like living like this, living only to be miserable. It isn't possible. There has to be something else, some other reason we drive ourselves insane. Because, unless there is a plain physical explanation, that is what we do, create the horrors within us all by ourselves.

Do we do it because of the pity? This is even more despicable to utter, and nevertheless does it need to be said. Does the pity and 'understanding' from the world we see through the glass wall that surrounds us give us satisfaction? The attention we, if going far enough in our misery, get from the people on the fifth floor – is that what we need and maybe even live off, even though we say we hate it and them for 'pretending' to understand our pain?

And does this justify people when they say that we should just gather ourselves together? Are they right, are we only looking for attention, attention we maybe got from those or what we grieve. Is pain something you choose – or is it something you make up so you won't have to choose something else, something else that after all your time spent emotionally elsewhere, has become frightening and even though, in theory, appealing – not so much in reality. Not when you can grasp it, feel it, feel that you maybe, maybe have overcome the demons. Is that when you will miss them, feel lonely and pull yourself back into the hole? Is it not the demons of different origin that do the ruling of our souls - is it us?

Is it possible that all the lonely people out there, people without demons to speak of, or at least not demons like ours – are really lonely because we, on some level, have rejected them? Is it possible that people like myself might have met their fates long ago without considering it to be just that, their fate? Have we given up on it or do we simply not look anymore – could the person we, wherever we might be, just passed by, be our fate without neither of us ever knowing it? Or could the woman we – no, what the hell – I – rejected as recently as last night at the same bar desk I have been sitting at for quite a while now, thinking up this. Could she, fiery red hair and all, have been my fate – … the new Danijela?

_"… at least TRY to get your life back on track!"_

No. No. Can't.

_"… and STOP that drinking, would you?!"_

What?

A crash in what I assume is the kitchen in which the questionable healthy food at this place is being cooked, or micro-waved, more like – wakes me up with a start. I suddenly see the transparent liquid that I, knowing what I have become lately, strongly doubt is water, in the glass in front of me, realizing I must have been staring down at it the entire time. Probably drinking it too. I stare at it, as if trying to detect its eyes to stare back at me. To my delight I find nothing of the sort – the lack of eyes in the glass gives me at least a small hope that my sanity is still remaining to some extent, and I move onward examining the glass. I smell it and become even more certain of that it indeed isn't water inside of it, but make no attempt to drink it as I suddenly don't want it – I don't even want to see it. Avoiding both smell and any sight of eyes that I still fear will turn up in it, I turn around slightly, the movement causing feelings that make me suspect that the damn glass has indeed been filled both once and twice, and emptied too.

I turn to the incredibly dusty window, heavy raindrops on it leaving clear traces on the glass as they drip down the window, meeting their fate on the ground. At least they know where to look for it. Damn, it must be easy being only one molecule, not this many. Many only gets complicated, one would suit me perfectly right now.

Well, every time I leave this place, I will be rid of some more, especially in my head, which is my major trouble zone right now.__

_"…once again, you are NOT the only person in this world!"_

Then why does it feel like it?

I have stared at the rain drops without as much as blinking for Christ knows how long, when something that - once you get past a certain age I definetly have gotten past long ago – isn't to be called music anymore, rudely interrupts me. I blink several times, for the second time in what the clock on the green wall confirms is no more than a few minutes feeling like I have just woken up.

Somebody considerably younger than I turns up the volume on the jukebox with what seems to be a few hundred decibels, and the place starts sounding like something between a war zone and a torturing chamber. Wondering when I became this old and cynical I slowly get up from the chair, the look on my face probably quite similar to the one Gordana started calling 'the-I-will-not-be-feeling-well-tomorrow' – look in our first month as carefree med students.

Standing up straight and throwing a few dollars that probably are either too many or too few and probably do not land where they should on the desk, I rest my somewhat blurry gaze in the corner that is the centre of this war zone and terror chamber for a while, thinking that would this be when I still knew the blonde woman whose name suddenly appeared in my crowded mind, then we'd both be back there, not at all considering the place torture.

Maybe because we hadn't quite felt real torture back then, just as the twenty-something bunch in this corner hasn't.__

Old and cynical indeed. And damn inconsiderate. What do I know about the youngsters back there, about their lives, about what they have already faced? And when did my thoughts leave my childhood friend, the tired officer whose wife yesterday, according to a rare and not so calm call from my sister, met the fate of _my_ wife. When did I become this damn selfish? That was one of the things she implied I was, actually.__

And how the hell could I for a second think, _consider, _that there'd be a new Danijela somewhere?

_"… she is GONE! Accept it. And HELP Dragan!"_

How?


End file.
